Oregon Trail Journal

By: Zach Isaak

Oregon Trail Journal

By: Zach Isaak

Journal Entry #1

My name is Michael and I am a merchant from New York City. I have my wife, my son, my daughter, my brother, his son, and his wife traveling with me on the Oregon Trail. I have started with $550. I decided to pack a lot of water and food for the journey ahead. I am also bringing guns and ammo to hunt.

It is the start of the journey and I decided to cross the river with out paying. I ended up making it across safely to the other side. Once we got across there was a place to stop and hunt. I hunted and got 15 pounds of buffalo. So, it was a great hunt. Next, we had a choice to gamble and I luckily got 2nd in the competition and didn't lose anything. We all bring lots of water so we got a big jump in front of all the wagons. That made our wagon very excited for the journey ahead.

Journal Entry #2

We had to do a research paper and our wagon forgot so we fell a little bit behind with a penalty to start the next day. I was rewarded with 2 blankets and 2 ammunition the next day for good work on the trail. I think that will help me a lot when there is another hunting spot. It has been a great adventure so far at the beginning of there trail. Luckily, none of my family members have passed yet. I have a feeling that it won't be this easy at he end of the trail.

We have gotten a big head start over everyone by bringing that right items on the trip. There was a lot of people who just slowed down cause of not bringing useful stuff. They probably brought to much pianos. We have come to a split in the road. We can either go a burial grounds trail or the cheyenne trail. The cheyenne trail is safer but it will put you back in time because it is a lot longer. We decided to take the safe route because we are ahead of the other wagons and we don't want to take the risk of dying.

Journal Entry #3

We have now come to the end of the trail. Now we have to choose between a super dangerous short trail, a trail that know one knows a thing about, and a safe but long trail. We decided the second trail which is a medium distanced trail but there is not much known about it. My youngest member of my family was very close to dying on this trail but he survived. When we got to the middle of the trail it was a dead end and we had to start on a new trail. We fell very far behind the other wagons from that poor decision.

We picked the short trail because we needed to catch up to the other wagons. I went hunting on that trail and got a huge kill of 30 pounds of buffalo. That will definitely help us out with food. To get to Oregon faster we had to get rid of 10 pounds of food per person in my family. So we lost 70 pounds of food but luckily I brought a lot of food on the trip. Next, we came across a river and we decided to cross the river with out paying. We made it safely though.

Journal Entry #4

Now we are getting really close to the end of the trail. But, with little supplies and food. We had to do a endurance challenge when we got up the next day. We got 2nd in it so we got ahead of some of the wagons. We are starting to get very tired at the end of the trail and some of my family members are not doing to well. Especially, the younger ones. We need to get to Oregon as quick as possible if we are going to survive.

We have come to the final choices of how to get to Oregon. We can go for it with a shortcut but it could be dangerous. We also could go backwards and camp out to wait for the possible snow storm. We decided that we need to get to Oregon as fast as possible and we picked the Route 1. We decided to take the shortcut and we came up to a challenge that we had complete to survive. The challenge was super hard so we did not beat it and everyone in our wagon died in the snowstorm.